As the wind sweeps across the Gobi Desert in Northwest China, countless white wind turbines are transforming the power of nature into clean electricity, while Trump's rhetoric remains stuck in the old era of fossil fuels.
"China manufactures almost all the wind turbines, but I can't find any wind farms in China." Trump's remarks at an internal meeting in late January made me shake my head. As an analyst who has long followed the energy and technology industry, I've seen too many misjudgments due to information lag, but it's still shocking that a national leader would so blatantly ignore the facts.
Ironically, at the same time he made these remarks, China's installed wind power capacity had exceeded 600 million kilowatts, equivalent to the power generation capacity of 600 nuclear power units, and had remained the world's largest for 15 consecutive years.
The reason Trump selectively "cannot see" these facts is simply because his voter base is firmly rooted in traditional energy states.
01 Fact Check: A Head-on Clash Between Trump's Rhetoric and the Data
Trump's claim that "China has almost no wind farms" stands in stark contrast to the reality of the world's energy landscape. Let's look at a few basic facts:
As of the end of November 2025, China's installed wind power capacity exceeded 600 million kilowatts, accounting for nearly half of the global total. In 2024, China's wind power generation reached 997 terawatt-hours, accounting for nearly 40% of the global total.
These wind turbines are not concentrated in one region, but are spread across China's wind-rich areas. From gigawatt-level wind and storage projects on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia to the 850-megawatt offshore wind farm in Yancheng, Jiangsu, and the megawatt-level offshore wind power base in Yangjiang, Guangdong, China's wind power landscape has covered both land and sea.
Western media have also reported on this objectively. The BBC explicitly pointed out that the scale of Gansu's wind power base is so large that it can be seen from space; The Guardian emphasized that the scale of wind power projects under construction in China is more than twice that of all other countries combined.
Trump either received severely distorted intelligence or deliberately ignored these publicly available data.
02 Political Calculations: The Voting Logic Behind Trump's Attack on Wind Power
Why is Trump repeatedly targeting the wind power industry? The answer lies in American domestic politics.
Traditional energy states are Trump's core voter base. Coal-producing states like West Virginia and Wyoming, as well as oil and gas states like Texas, constitute Trump's political base. These regions' economies are heavily reliant on fossil fuels, and any development of clean energy is seen as a threat to traditional energy interests.
After entering his second term in 2025, Trump quickly nominated oil tycoon Chris Wright as Secretary of Energy, and on his inauguration day, he signed an executive order declaring a "national energy emergency" and withdrew from the Paris Agreement again. This series of actions demonstrates that his energy policy serves entirely political interests.
At a deeper level, political polarization in the United States has turned clean energy into a tool for partisan struggle. When the Democrats push for a climate agenda, the Republicans inevitably take the opposite approach. This political polarization results in a lack of continuity in US energy policy, with each change of administration constantly shifting and repeating itself.
Another purpose of Trump's attacks on China's wind power is to try to cover up the United States' lagging behind in the energy transition. The development of wind power in the United States is constrained by many bottlenecks such as aging power grids, private land ownership, and cumbersome approval processes, while China has achieved efficient development by virtue of its complete industrial chain.
03 The Real Picture of Wind Power in China: Scale and Challenges Coexist
The development path of China's wind power industry deserves in-depth study. Contrary to Trump's description of "selling without using," China not only uses wind power extensively but is also building a complete energy ecosystem.
The scale of China's wind power projects is astonishing. The Inner Mongolia Energy Xisu Wind and Storage Project, the first in China to utilize a 10-megawatt-class large-scale onshore wind turbine, will be completed in 2025. Its rotor diameter exceeds 200 meters, equivalent to the length of two football fields. Meanwhile, the 850-megawatt offshore wind power project in Dafeng, Jiangsu, showcases China's engineering and technological capabilities in complex sea conditions.
More importantly, Chinese wind power projects are often combined with technologies such as energy storage, smart grids, and hydrogen production. The Kubuqi Desert base project explored a synergistic model of photovoltaic desertification control, ecological restoration, and clean energy development, demonstrating the application of systems thinking in energy transition.
However, China's wind power industry also faces its own challenges. Within the industry, there are instances of falsified power curve parameters, with some companies misrepresenting technical specifications, leading to a crisis of trust across the entire industry chain. At the same time, factors such as "wind curtailment" (i.e., the inability of all generated electricity to be integrated into the grid) and the immaturity of energy storage technology also constrain the improvement of wind power efficiency.
Qin Hai, Secretary-General of the China Wind Energy Professional Committee, predicts that China's annual newly installed wind power capacity will remain stable at around 120 million kilowatts from 2026 to 2028. This indicates that despite challenges, China's wind power industry is still on a rapid development track.
04 The underlying logic of energy transition: Why wind power is related to future competitiveness
Trump may not realize that his mockery of China's wind power actually exposed a weakness in the US energy strategy. In 21st-century economic competition, energy, especially clean energy, is the foundation for supporting the development of the digital economy.
Cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud computing require enormous computing power, which is essentially energy consumption. Training a large language model may consume tens of megawatt-hours of electricity, equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of hundreds of households. In the future, with the popularization of AI technology, the demand for stable, inexpensive, and clean electricity will grow exponentially.
In this sense, renewable energy sources such as wind power are no longer merely environmental issues, but rather the cornerstone of national strategic security. Whoever can first build a large-scale, low-cost clean energy system will gain an advantage in future digital economy competition.
China has clearly realized this. Those wind farms scattered across the country are not only providing electricity for the present, but also reserving energy capacity for future AI computing centers and data centers. This is a long-term strategic layout, not a short-term market behavior.
In contrast, the United States' wavering energy policy could erode its technological advantage. Without sufficient clean electricity, Silicon Valley's technological innovation will face an energy bottleneck. This is a key factor that is often overlooked but could determine the future competitive landscape.
05 A New Arena for Great Power Competition: The Transformation from Energy to Computing Power
Behind the energy transition lies a fundamental shift in the logic of great power competition. In the 20th century, national power was built on steel, oil, and nuclear weapons, while in the 21st century, core competitiveness increasingly manifests as competition in computing power, data, and artificial intelligence.
Through large-scale wind power construction, China is converting natural wind energy into electricity, and then into computing power through data centers. This process completes an upgrade of the value chain: wind energy → electricity → computing power → economic competitiveness.
The Trump administration appears to lack a comprehensive understanding of this. They recognized China's advantage in wind turbine manufacturing but may have underestimated the strategic intent behind it. China is not only manufacturing wind turbines but also building a complete industrial chain ecosystem covering R&D, design, manufacturing, project construction, and operation and maintenance.
It is worth noting that China's technology exports in the wind power sector have also reached a considerable scale. By the end of 2025, China's cumulative exported wind turbine capacity had exceeded 28 million kilowatts, reaching more than 60 countries. These devices have made a substantial contribution to global emissions reduction and expanded China's influence in the global energy transition.
The future competitive landscape is clear: those countries that can efficiently convert natural forces such as wind and solar energy into stable electricity, and further into computing power and data advantages, will take a leading position in the new round of industrial revolution. China is making steady progress on this path, while the United States is still figuring out its direction amidst policy fluctuations.
Texas's wind farms may not be as spectacular as those in Inner Mongolia, China, but the real competition is not about who has more wind turbines, but about who can transform clean energy into future economic competitiveness.
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